


Rust and Stardust

by LadyProto



Series: Lolita [4]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Backstory, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Dissociation, Gen, Gender Issues, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Injury, Military Backstory, Other, Past Rape/Non-con, Patriarchy, Prompto x Iris if you squint, Rape Recovery, Self-Esteem Issues, Sexism, Sexist Language, Victim Blaming, or she blames herself rather
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2018-12-30 16:09:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12112359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyProto/pseuds/LadyProto
Summary: Dumped where the weed decays. Oh, I’ve been such a disgusting girl.((Continuing on the Lolita train. Aftermath and eventual recovery))





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> More of the story that nobody wants lol. Title and description from Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The day after she was raped, Iris wakes up as normal.

During her first conscious inhale, Iris is at peace. She’s always been an early riser just so she can experience moments like this. The world becomes soft and fuzzy as the sun starts to shyly show it’s face over the lip of the window sill.  The first throngs of early risers mill outside of her window, their babbling  interspersed with the merry chirping of birds. In that moment, at the top of her breath, the memory had yet to flood her mind.  There was stillness.

And then the exhale. 

The world whites out as sunbeams illuminate the previous night’s atrocity. Everywhere Iris looks, she sees the stains Ardyn has left behind. Everywhere he’s touched her, decay has bloomed. Her pale skin is mottled with necrosis-colored bruises, clustered so densely that she can’t see the way she looked before Ardyn. 

The over-bleached sheets lay twisted with wetness underneath her spread legs. He left her naked and dripping, but tucked in the blankets like a child.  When she tries to move, all she feels is a harsh throbbing pain deep in her body, in parts she doesn’t know the name of. Her wrist burns still, and her hip cracks as she shifts. Gingerly, she moves her swollen hands to  touch her inner thighs, where the filth is the thickest. 

Her hand comes back sticky. The acidic bleachy smell would send her gagging if it wasn’t for the fact that her hand seems foreign. It’s not part of her. The thick, vile stuff on her fingers. That’s not from her either. It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen --

Iris’s limbs creak like unoiled hinges as she manages to swing her legs around and off the bed. The change in position shifts the wetness inside of her and when she rises to unsteady feet, all of the secrets he’d stuffed inside of her begins to trail its way into the light. Her sins are painted in sticky streaks of red in between her thighs and it melds with the semen trickling out of her. 

_ Pink. My favorite.  _

The memories flood back, and the impact sends her brain scrambling to cope. Ardyn’s hands. Ardyn’s face. Ardyn’s voice. The flashbacks are distorted, blurry and out of order, but the feelings crawl along her body as if it’s happening again. Soft, doting touches to her face as his fingers pry her apart, scraping her empty. There’s nothing left. 

Her knees almost buckle. She is such a stupid girl, letting something like this happen to her. He took what he wanted and left. Put on his long dark coat and odd brimmed hat and left her a twisted doll on soiled sheets. He threw her away. No. No. It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen. 

Just. Get. Clean.

Ardyn took her body, he must have stolen her mind too, because her brain has become a vacuum. Every movement is mechanical. She can’t even allow herself to be sick as her thighs stick together as she waddles to bathroom.

She clutches the sink, staring back at the thing in the mirror. It has sunken, watery eyes, and stringy hair plastered to its face. She doesn't have the clarity to recognize it as herself. She sees a refugee child. Weightless. Formless. A cloud of kicked up dust that's left behind as everyone moves onward. 

This isn't  _ her _ . The reflection’s red eyes are too round and innocent for a whore like herself. She's not dead, but she's not really alive either. It’s as if her existence fades in and out of reality, a ghost caught in between the peace of dying and trauma of living. The reality before this hotel room is nonexistent. The little girl from Insomnia, the one that had so much softness and warmth to give, has been reduced to bone and ash. All that exists is her body, and it only exists for Ardyn. How many times had it happened? What all had he done to her?

No. What all did she _ let him do? _ Iris had made herself pretty before she went to Lestallum. Pretty to be looked at, to be grabbed, to be fucked. It’s disgusting. She’s disgusting. 

_ Get him out of me. _

Iris presses two fingers to the roof of her mouth, and she vomits up lattes and semen. The force of her retching is enough to nearly throw her head against the mirror. Not that it matters, she doesn't know that person anyways. The only thing that's real is the taste, the feel, the memory of Ardyn as he forced her to take him in. She wants it out.  She tries to trick herself into getting sicker, to throw up more, but when she thinks of disgusting things the only thing that comes to mind is herself. 

Teeth: brushed. Face: washed. There's no clothes for her to take off, and she robotically moves into the shower. It seems strange that she would continue her normal morning routine in the face of such such brutality. Perhaps the ability to move on in such a way is an indication of her willing participation. She wanted attention, and she got it. It was just bad sex. 

Sex. It had only been a vague idea in her head. In biology class she learned about mating, about ducks with corkscrew genitalia and boy bedbugs stabbing girl bedbugs in the stomach with their penises. In her books, it was clinical but it had never been clearly defined in her personal exposure to the concept. For her brother,sex was a coping mechanism for a stressful family and a legacy of death. For the girls in her school, it was a show of affection. For Prompto it almost seemed to be self-harm. For Noctis, it was only spoken about in terms of an heir.

An heir.

Oh gods. What is she's pregnant? She snaps once more into a frantic panic. Blood and cum swirl around her feet. There's definitely a chance! He’d.. Ardyn had… finished inside her. She could hide the fact that she's invited a strange man into her hotel room, but she wouldn't be able to hide a pregnancy. Panic mounts. She detaches the shower head and turns the water to scalding as she holds it between her legs. She will burn him out of her. 

Soundlessly, dissociation crawls in again. Water burns red angry streaks into her thighs until the skin glows hot and raw. She takes the punishment as penitence for her crime of existing in a female body. The others can never know what she's done. Her brother will hate her for being weak. Ignis will consider her trouble. Noctis will leave her behind again. She will cover the bruises with Gil-Store make-up and pretend this never happened.

Iris scrubs and scrubs until her body bleeds again, until her sprained wrist cries louder than her thoughts. Scalding water turns to ice, But still, her skin never comes clean. There's bubbles in her hand from the soap. Has she washed her hair? She can't remember. Her eyes are stinging so she must have. There's a sudden kindred spirit between her and the object as it tries to float away into nothingness, only to be caught in the confines of the shower walls. One touch and it dies against her fingertips. Left to soap scum that will circle the drain. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We learn about Iris's mother.

How many times did it happened? How many times did she let him touch her? There's gaps in her memories. Somewhere between his amber eyes and dripping honey tones, something went wrong. She swims in the taste of decay and gags on his tongue, his fingers, his dick. She remembers taking off her clothes. Being touched. Being kissed. Ardyn on top of her. Fingers like blades that part her thighs. 

But it's all distorted and blurry. With her crumbling and unreliable memory, Iris can only fill in the blanks with her own guilt. Was it her fault the entire time? She doesn't know. Maybe it wasn't as bad as the flashes of memories would lead her to believe. Maybe she deserved her sprained wrist and creaky hip. Maybe she was meant to suffer.

The shower ran out of hot water half an hour ago, and it takes Iris twenty minutes more to pull herself off the shower floor. The pain feels so much deeper now after she’s had a chance to resettle. Is it possible to be broken from the inside from sex? The skin at her entrance is swollen from abuse. Her insides are raw, like the time she dumbly touched one of Ignis’s knives and let the poison fester in the cut. Part of her wants to feel the damage for herself, but she fears touching herself. It'll make her dirty again.

She’s still bleeding, almost as heavily as if she’d started her period. Maybe she can use that as her cover. Her stomach and back hurts from her period. Nothing more. She has pads in the closet. She’d rather use tampons but the thought of anything inside her again seems physically agonizing. 

Armed with a plan, Iris shuts off the water. She can do this. She’s can smile and pretend she’s not dying. She’s had fifteen years practice of pretending things are okay. 

Stepping out of the shower, she quickly reaches to cover herself with the itchy hotel towel. Somehow she seems more acutely aware of how the fabric hangs on her body. Is this how the man had seen her? Sex dripping from her barely present curves? Gross. Dirty. Bad. Her body physically and figuratively drips of sex. She hadn’t had the foresight to bring clothes to the bathroom with her, which means she’s going ot have to walk through the mainroom in nothing but the towel. THe idea of anyone seeing her bare sends her stomach churning. 

Cautiously, she opens the bathroom door. She half expects to see Ardyn, waiting for her. He said he would be back. He said this would be forever. Tears build pressure behind her eyes as heaviness of that statement weighs down on her. Forever a toy. Forever a body but never a person. Forever bleeding, crying, hurting. The fear mounts so high that when the door opens to an empty room, it seems like a lie. 

She’s alone. Her sighs sink to the floor in the oppressive Lestallum heat. Her breath seems too loud in the emptiness, as if she shouldn’t be breathing at all. There’s no hidden boogy man waiting for her, nothing threatening at all. There’s just a single broken mug and a misplaced chair to tell the story of last night’s horrors. 

It’s quiet, but the odd kind of quiet, sort of like after her mother died. Iris was barely four when it happened, but even her young mind could understand something was wrong. It was utter silence through the halls of the citadel's chapel. No tears, no sobs, nothing but a few impersonal words and neutral faces. Grieving wasn’t allowed in a family like hers. 

And truthfully, The death of her mother had been a long time coming. It was Iris’s fault as most things are. Being pregnant with Iris had messed with her mind leading to postpartum depression that spanned years. She found relief after several bottles of wine and fistfuls of sleeping pills. Which of course, left Iris alone s the only girl in a testosterone driven legacy, 

Iris pulls her towel tighter as she tries to tiptoe towards the closet. Thick, aching silence follows her. She didn’t understand it then, but as she’s grown older she’s come to rationalize why someone would drink away their sanity, smoke their lungs black

...Or throw themselves of buildings.

She doesn't get a chance to contemplate it further. Iris barely gets to the closet before the room begins to shake.The shards of glass on the floor rattle. The floorboards vibrate. She doesn't move at all, her brain unable to make sense of the input from her ears and feet. Thud. Thud. Drag, Iris’s heart hammers in times with the barrage of heavy footfalls on the stairs outside her hotel room. She hates hates hates loud sounds, and her nerves are already frayed from the unwanted touching. It's happening again. She needs to hide. It's happening again.

Kicks to the doorframe. Dry wood splinters into sawdust and green lead paint. What's left of the door hits the wall. It's Gladdy, marching through the door frantic scramble. Her mind continues to short circuit. 

He's not supposed to be here.

He’s not suppose to know. 

Iris can’t move. Even has Gladio falls to his knees for his sister, she can’t manage to move away. She hates every moment that his large hands reach for her, spin her around, manhandles her through her towels. He looks for injuries in swift sweeping glances. “Iris. Iris, I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry.”

His voice grumbles next to her ear, but at the same time it seems so far away and flat. Sorry for what? She wants to ask him. IN another time, in another plane of reality she would be brave enough to sit him down and ask. Sorry for leaving her alone to her fate for so long? This is all she’s good for isn’t it? He knew all along and never told her. Sorry that he left her to this? He wasn’t supposed to protect her. But she’s an Amicitia. She should have known better. Maybe he’s sorry she exists. Iris is sorry for that fact too. 

But in this reality, Iris can only flinch as Gladdy touches her face. It's Dirty. Bad. Wrong. It's her brother, but she's so unclean. She can't separate her identity from sex, and the tender looks, the desperately tight hug. It’s too much. She can’t even make a sound. 

Over his shoulder she can see the others three boys are standing in the doorway, staring down at the scene with judgmental glares. Ignis, stern as always, face neutral but eyes sharp. He has that way of setting his jaw when he’s faced with a scene that’s against his liking. Only this time his tenseness is directed towards her. Prompto is too disgusted to even look at her, his eyes darting back and forth between the chair, the sheets, the glass -- anywhere but her. Noctis just shakes his head slowly, disapprovingly, shock in his eyes. 

“Iris.” Her name sounds foreign as Gladio speaks. “Did he --?”

Iris says nothing. Goes small. Doesn’t exist. Her handsfeel too big. The loops of the terry cloth suddenly feel like glass shards. They can see it, can't they? It’s written on her body so clearly. Not in bruises or blood, but his essence hangs on her like a film of un-rinsable soap scum. She was too needy, too wanton, too trusting. She followed a strange man around like and, lapped up his praise like a starved kitten. She spread her legs so easily for him. She didn’t want it. She swears she never wanted it. 

“I don’t -- what happened?” Prompto questions. 

Gladio growls for Prompto to shut up. “Ardyn happened.”

Ardyn. They know him. She’d never heard the name before, but then again, why would she? It’s not like they ever talk to her. She exists like a bubbles following the air current. Star dust that swirls in the night skin. Rust on the wind. Not real. Not real. Not real. 

“Ardyn?” Noctis hisses like an angry cat. “He was here? But we just --”

“I know.”

“But how? He was just --”

“I fucking know, Noct. I know.”

She wants to ask them to please stop yelling. But she has no voice. She never has.


End file.
